Protein Structure

Protein structure Proteins are an important class of biological macromolecules present in all biological organisms, made up of such elements as carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, and sulfur. All proteins are polymers of amino acids. The polymers, also known as polypeptides consist of a sequence of 20 different L-α-amino acids, also referred to as residues. For chains under 40 residues the term peptide is frequently used instead of protein. To be able to perform their biological function, proteins fold into one, or more, specific spatial conformations, driven by a number of noncovalent interactions such as hydrogen bonding, ionic interactions, Van der Waals' forces and hydrophobic packing. In order to understand the functions of proteins at a molecular level, it is often necessary to determine the three dimensional structure of proteins. This is the topic of the scientific field of structural biology, that employs techniques such as X-ray crystallography or NMR spectroscopy, to determine the structure of proteins. A certain number of residues is necessary to perform a particular biochemical function, and around 40-50 residues appears to be the lower limit for a functional domain size. Protein sizes range from this lower limit to several thousand residues in multi-functional or structural proteins. However, the current estimate for the average protein length is around 300 residues. Very large aggregates can be formed from protein subunits, for example many thousand actin molecules assemble into a collagen filament

Levels of protein structur Protein structure, from primary to quaternary structure. Biochemistry refers to four distinct aspects of a protein's structure: • •

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Primary structure - the amino acid sequence of the peptide chains. Secondary structure - highly regular sub-structures (alpha helix and strands of beta sheet) which are locally defined, meaning that there can be many different secondary motifs present in one single protein molecule. Tertiary structure - Three-dimensional structure of a single protein molecule; a spatial arrangement of the secondary structures. Quaternary structure - complex of several protein molecules or polypeptide chains, usually called protein subunits in this context, which function as part of the larger assembly or protein complex.

In addition to these levels of structure, a protein may shift between several similar structures in performing its biological function. In the context of these functional rearrangements, these tertiary or quaternary structures are usually referred to as chemical conformation, and transitions between them are called conformational changes.

The primary structure is held together by covalent or peptide bonds, which are made during the process of protein biosynthesis or translation. The two ends of the amino acid chain are referred to as the C-terminal end or carboxy terminus (C-terminus) and the Nterminal end or amino terminus (N-terminus) based on the nature of the free group on each extremity. The various types of secondary structure are defined by their patterns of hydrogen bonds between the main-chain peptide groups. However, these hydrogen bonds are generally not stable by themselves, since the water-amide hydrogen bond is generally more favorable than the amide-amide hydrogen bond. Thus, secondary structure is stable only when the local concentration of water is sufficiently low, e.g., in the molten globule or fully folded states. Similarly, the formation of molten globules and tertiary structure is driven mainly by structurally non-specific interactions, such as the rough propensities of the amino acids and hydrophobic interactions. However, the tertiary structure is fixed only when the parts of a protein domain are locked into place by structurally specific interactions, such as ionic interactions (salt bridges), hydrogen bonds and the tight packing of side chains. The tertiary structure of extracellular proteins can also be stabilized by disulfide bonds, which reduce the entropy of the unfolded state; disulfide bonds are extremely rare in cytosolic proteins, since the cytosol is generally a reducing environment

Structure of the amino acids An α-amino acid An α-amino acid consists of a part that is present in all the amino acid types, and a side chain that is unique to each type of residue. The Cα atom is bound to 4 different molecules (the H is omitted in the diagram); an amino group, a carboxyl group, a hydrogen and a side chain, specific for this type of amino acid. An exception from this rule is proline, where the hydrogen atom is replaced by a bond to the side chain. Because the carbon atom is bound to four different groups it is chiral, however only one of the isomers occur in biological proteins. Glycine however, is not chiral since its side chain is a hydrogen atom. A simple mnemonic for correct L-form is "CORN": when the Cα atom is viewed with the H in front, the residues read "CO-R-N" in a clockwise direction. The side chain determines the chemical properties of the α-amino acid and may be any one of the 20 different side chains:

The peptide bond Two amino acids can be combined in a condensation reaction. By repeating this reaction, long chains of residues (amino acids in a peptide bond) can be generated. This reaction is catalysed by the ribosome in a process known as translation. The peptide bond is in fact planar due to the delocalization of the electrons from the double bond. The rigid peptide dihedral angle, ω (the bond between C1 and N) is always close to 180 degrees. The dihedral angles φ (the bond between N and Cα) and psi ψ (the bond between Cα and C1) can have a certain range of possible values. These angles are the degrees of freedom of a protein, they control the protein's three dimensional structure. They are restrained by geometry to allowed ranges typical for particular secondary structure elements, and represented in a Ramachandran plot. A few important bond lengths are given in the table below.

Primary structure Main article: Primary structure The sequence of the different amino acids is called the primary structure of the peptide or protein. Counting of residues always starts at the N-terminal end (NH2-group), which is the end where the amino group is not involved in a peptide bond. The primary structure of a protein is determined by the gene corresponding to the protein. A specific sequence of nucleotides in DNA is transcribed into mRNA, which is read by the ribosome in a process called translation. The sequence of a protein is unique to that protein, and defines the structure and function of the protein. The sequence of a protein can be determined by methods such as Edman degradation or tandem mass spectrometry. Often however, it is read directly from the sequence of the gene using the genetic code. Post-transcriptional modifications such as disulfide formation, phosphorylations and glycosylations are usually also considered a part of the primary structure, and cannot be read from the gene.

Secondary structure Main article: Secondary structure By building models of peptides using known information about bond lengths and angles, the first elements of secondary structure, the alpha helix and the beta sheet, were suggested in 1951 by Linus Pauling and coworkers.[1] Both the alpha helix and the betasheet represent a way of saturating all the hydrogen bond donors and acceptors in the peptide backbone. These secondary structure elements only depend on properties that all the residues have in common, explaining why they occur frequently in most proteins. Since then other elements of secondary structure have been discovered such as various loops and other forms of helices. The part of the backbone that is not in a regular secondary structure is said to be random coil. Each of these two secondary structure

elements have a regular geometry, meaning they are constrained to specific values of the dihedral angles ψ and φ. Thus they can be found in a specific region of the Ramachandran plot.

Tertiary structure Main article: tertiary structure The elements of secondary structure are usually folded into a compact shape using a variety of loops and turns. The formation of tertiary structure is usually driven by the burial of hydrophobic residues, but other interactions such as hydrogen bonding, ionic interactions and disulfide bonds can also stabilize the tertiary structure. The tertiary structure encompasses all the noncovalent interactions that are not considered secondary structure, and is what defines the overall fold of the protein, and is usually indispensable for the function of the protein.

Quarternary structure Main article: quarternary structure The quarternary structure is the interaction between several chains of peptide bonds. The individual chains are called subunits. The individual subunits are not necessarily covalently connected, but might be connected by a disulfide bond. Not all proteins have quarternary structure, since they might be functional as monomers. The quarternary structure is stabilized by the same range of interactions as the tertiary structure. Complexes of two or more polypeptides (i.e. multiple subunits) are called multimers. Specifically it would be called a dimer if it contains two subunits, a trimer if it contains three subunits, and a tetramer if it contains four subunits. Multimers made up of identical subunits may be referred to with a prefix of "homo-" (e.g. a homotetramer) and those made up of different subunits may be referred to with a prefix of "hetero-" (e.g. a heterodimer). Tertiary structures vary greatly from one protein to another. They are held together by glycosydic and covalent bonds.

Side chain conformation The atoms along the side chain are named with Greek letters in Greek alphabetical order: α, β, γ, δ, є and so on. Cα refers to the carbon atom closest to the carbonyl group of that amino acid, Cβ the second closest and so on. The Cα is usually considered a part of the backbone. The dihedral angles around the bonds between these atoms are named χ1, χ2, χ3 etc. E.g. the first and second carbon atom in the side chain of lysine is named α and β, and the dihedral angle around the α-β bond is named χ1. Side chains can be in different conformations called gauche(-), trans and gauche(+). Side chains generally tend to try to come into a staggered conformation around χ2, driven by the minimization of the overlap between the electron orbitals of the hydrogen atoms.

Domains, motifs, and folds in protein structure Many proteins are organised into several units. A structural domain is an element of the proteins overall structure that is self-stabilizing and often folds independently of the rest of the protein chain. Many domains are not unique to the protein products of one gene or one gene family but instead appear in a variety of proteins. Domains often are named and singled out because they figure prominently in the biological function of the protein they belong to; for example, the "calcium-binding domain of calmodulin". Because they are self-stabilizing, domains can be "swapped" by genetic engineering between one protein and another to make chimeras. A motif in this sense refers to a small specific combination of secondary structural elements (such as helix-turn-helix). These elements are often called supersecondary structures. Fold refers to a global type of arrangement, like helixbundle or beta-barrel. Structure motifs usually consist of just a few elements, e.g. the 'helix-turn-helix' has just three. Note that while the spatial sequence of elements is the same in all instances of a motif, they may be encoded in any order within the underlying gene. Protein structural motifs often include loops of variable length and unspecified structure, which in effect create the "slack" necessary to bring together in space two elements that are not encoded by immediately adjacent DNA sequences in a gene. Note also that even when two genes encode secondary structural elements of a motif in the same order, nevertheless they may specify somewhat different sequences of amino acids. This is true not only because of the complicated relationship between tertiary and primary structure, but because the size of the elements varies from one protein and the next. Despite the fact that there are about 100,000 different proteins expressed in eukaryotic systems, there are much fewer different domains, structural motifs and folds. This is partly a consequence of evolution, since genes or parts of genes can be doubled or moved around within the genome. This means that, for example, a protein domain might be moved from one protein to another thus giving the protein a new function. Because of these mechanisms pathways and mechanisms tends to be reused in several different proteins.

Protein folding Main article: Protein folding The process by which the higher structures form is called protein folding and is a consequence of the primary structure. A unique polypeptide may have more than one stable folded conformation, which could have a different biological activity, but usually, only one conformation is considered to be the active, or native conformation.

Structure classification Several methods have been developed for the structural classification of proteins. These seek to classify the data in the Protein Data Bank in a structured order. Several databases exist which classify proteins using different methods. SCOP, CATH and FSSP are the largest ones. The methods used are purely manual, manual and automated, and purely

automated. Work is being done to better integrate the current data. The classification is consistent between SCOP, CATH and FSSP for the majority of proteins which have been classified, but there are still some differences and inconsistencies.

Protein structure determination Around 90% of the protein structures available in the Protein Data Bank have been determined by X-ray crystallography. This method allows one to measure the 3D density distribution of electrons in the protein (in the crystallized state) and thereby infer the 3D coordinates of all the atoms to be determined to a certain resolution. Roughly 9% of the known protein structures have been obtained by Nuclear Magnetic Resonance techniques, which can also be used to determine secondary structure. Note that aspects of the secondary structure as whole can be determined via other biochemical techniques such as circular dichroism. Secondary structure can also be predicted with a high degree of accuracy (see next section). Cryo-electron microscopy has recently become a means of determining protein structures to low resolution (less than 5 angstroms or 0.5 nanometer) and is anticipated to increase in power as a tool for high resolution work in the next decade. This technique is still a valuable resource for researchers working with very large protein complexes such as virus coat proteins and amyloid fibers.

X-ray crystallography• X-ray crystallography is the science of determining the arrangement of atoms within a crystal from the manner in which a beam of X-rays is scattered from the electrons within the crystal. The method produces a three-dimensional picture of the density of electrons within the crystal, from which the mean atomic positions, their chemical bonds, their disorder and sundry other information can be derived. By definition, a crystal is a solid in which a particular arrangement of atoms (its unit cell) is repeated indefinitely along three principal directions known as the basis (or lattice) vectors, which are not necessarily perpendicular. A wide variety of materials can form crystals — such as salts, metals, minerals, semiconductors, as well as various inorganic, organic and biological molecules — which has made X-ray crystallography fundamental to many scientific fields. The oldest and most precise method of X-ray crystallography is single-crystal X-ray diffraction, in which a beam of X-rays is reflected from evenly spaced planes of a single crystal, producing a diffraction pattern of spots called reflections.[1] Each reflection corresponds to one set of evenly spaced planes within the crystal. The density of electrons within the crystal is determined from the position and brightness of the various reflections observed as the crystal is gradually rotated in the X-ray beam; this density, together with supplementary data, allows the atomic positions to be inferred. For single crystals of sufficient purity and regularity, X-ray diffraction data can determine the mean chemical bond lengths and angles to within a few thousandths of an Ångström and to within a few tenths of a degree, respectively. The data also allow the static and dynamic disorder in the atomic positions to be estimated, which is usually less than a few tenths of an Ångström. At its most basic level, X-ray crystallography is useful in identifying known materials, characterizing new materials and in discerning materials that appear

similar by other experiments. However, X-ray crystal structures have many other applications; for example, they can account for unusual electronic or elastic properties of a material, shed light on chemical interactions and processes, or serve as the basis for understanding enzymatic mechanisms and designing pharmaceuticals against diseases. The term "X-ray crystallography" is also sometimes applied to methods that involve Xray diffraction from polycrystalline materials, such as powders of small crystals studied by X-ray powder diffraction. The technique of single-crystal X-ray crystallography has three basic steps. The first — and often most difficult — step is to obtain an adequate crystal of the material under study. The crystal should be sufficiently large, pure in composition and regular in structure, with no large internal imperfections such as cracks or twinning. In the second step, the crystal is placed in an intense beam of X-rays, usually of a single wavelength (monochromatic X-rays), producing the regular pattern of reflections. As the crystal is gradually rotated, previous reflections disappear and new ones appear; the intensity of every spot is recorded meticulously at every orientation of the crystal. Multiple data sets may have to be collected, with each set covering slightly more than half a full rotation of the crystal and containing tens of thousands of reflection intensities. In the third step, these data are combined computationally with complementary chemical information to produce and refine a model of the arrangement of atoms within the crystal. The final, refined model — now called a crystal structure — is usually stored in a public database. As the crystal's unit cell becomes larger, the atomic-level picture provided by X-ray crystallography becomes less well-resolved (more "fuzzy") for a given number of observed reflections. Two limiting cases of X-ray crystallography are often discerned, "small-molecule" and "macromolecular" crystallography. Small-molecule crystallography typically involves crystals with fewer than 100 atoms in their asymmetric unit; such crystal structures are usually so well resolved that its atoms can be discerned as isolated "blobs" of electron density. By contrast, macromolecular crystallography often involves tens of thousands of atoms in the unit cell. Such crystal structures are generally less well-resolved (more "smeared out"); the atoms and chemical bonds appear as tubes of electron density, rather than as isolated atoms. In general, small molecules are also easier to crystallize than macromolecules; however, X-ray crystallography has proven possible even for viruses with hundreds of thousands of atoms.

Protein nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. Protein nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (usually abbreviated protein NMR) is a field of structural biology in which NMR spectroscopy is used to obtain information about the structure and dynamics of proteins. The field was pioneered by, among others, Kurt Wüthrich, who shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2002. Protein NMR techniques are continually being used and improved in both academia and the biotech industry. Structure determination by NMR spectroscopy usually consists of several following phases, each using a separate set of highly specialized techniques. The sample is prepared, resonances are assigned, restraints are generated and a structure is calculated and validated.